Spark by Hilton Bardstown — Hotel in Bardstown

Can't even begin to say how mad I am right now. Stayed there with a group over 4th of July weekend. I arrived on Wednesday and stayed through Sunday.

First night, I kicked my shoes off while sitting at the desk and my socks got soaked instantly. Seems that the drain on the AC unit malfunctioned or something.

I honestly don't remember the exact timeline, but I notified the front desk and they were on it. Maintenance guy came to the room, removed the the AC, put another one in and showed me how to manually operate it.

Front desk person offered to move me to another room as the carpet near the desk was still wet, but I declined for 2 reasons.

First, part of my group was in the adjoining suite. Second, and important to this is that I'm a heavy smoker and this room is close to the elevator and the smoking areas. I wanted the convenience of easily being able to go out and smoke and didn't want to give that up just because of a small bit of wet carpet.

Maintenance guy brought some towels to sop up most of the water and then put one of those big blower fans in the corner to evaporate the moisture.

Fwiw, I'm pretty easy going and was fine with the arrangement. Front desk was very responsive and maintenance staff went out of their way to fix the problem.

So, being a heavy smoker, i spent a lot of my time at the hotel sitting at the metal picnic table out back, or leaning on the railing out front while smoking.

When I finish a smoke, i roll the filter between two fingers to drop the burning cherry on the ground and i smash it out with my foot . I then put the extinguished cigarette butt in my pocket. Over the course of an entire day, I might end up with 10 or 20 butts in my pocket. At some point, ill decide that it's time to empty my pocket, so ill throw the used butts into a garbage can.

Anyways, that's what I did while at the hotel. Fwiw, it's the exact same thing that I've done ine weekend a year for at least the last 25 years at the Bardstown Hampton. And yes, I almost always

So, why am i upset? Because for some reason, after I had checked out and settled my bill, i was charged an additional $250. I'm

When i noticed the charge, I called in during the evening and the clerk said their computer was down. It happens. So, I called the next day and the clerk said that the charge was for smoking in the room and that I'd have to talk to the manager. She said she'd transfer me and the call went to voicemail. I hung up , called back and clerk transferred me again. This time, I left a message with phone number. This was around Noon.

Didn't hear back that day or the next morning. Tried calling back a number of times and couldn't get through. Again, it happens. Desk was probably busy

I finally got through later in the day was transferred to the manager. Let's just say that she was combative and apparently wasn't about discuss the issue. She said she had pictures of cigarette butts! And that the room was so bad that couldn't rent it out for the week.

There was no discussing this with her. I mentioned that she could look at vid tapes and see all the times i left my room and went out to smoke. It was literally every hour except for when I was asleep. Didn't matter that I've stayed there for 25+ years, usually in the same room and never had this issue.

Anyways, i contacted Hilton about it. They later replied back that manager insists that I smoked in the room (I didn't ) and that the charge will remain.

Enjoy the $250. My room cost me $615ish for the 4 days. Our group had 2 other rooms at the same rate for 4 nights. That's another $1230 for a total of $1850. I believe we had 4 or 5 other nights in our group that weekend (some for 1 night, 2 nights or 3). All told, probably $2500+ this year. Usually its even more as some folks who normally attend couldn't make it this year.

Heck, you have the records as our group does block reservations. They might even have reservations for next year already.

Im going to do what i can to see that we stay...

The young man who checked us in the evening we arrived, was courteous and helpful. Accommodating a room switch a few hours after we arrived. That, is the ONLY reason this hotel has 2 stars, 4 stars for him alone. This hotel is STILL under renovation, as others have mentioned. When you first arrive there is caution tape strung up around the pillars and an extension cord under the portico. Almost everyone was placed on the 2nd floor of the hotel. You have to walk half the length of the hotel to access the elevator, just one. An old box that barely fits 3 people, with a musty smell and old carpet. As we walked to our room, on the BACKSIDE of the hotel, we noticed, none of the rooms had room numbers, but blue masking tape with handwritten numbers on them. We were in a renovated room, when we noticed at 9pm that the walls were paper thin. We could CLEARLY hear the neighbors during some extra curricular activities next door, down to the last gasping breath. The young man downstairs, switched our room to one that was downstairs. We walked though a hallway of construction to get to the room downstairs; this room had not been updated. Everything in the room seemed old and worn, although I will say the sheets were clean under blacklight. The toilet knocked when you flushed it, and the room had cobwebs on the ceiling. By morning, we walked outside the hotel to get to the breakfast area, as we didn't want to walk back through the construction zone where the workers are living. The door back into the hotel is unsecure and can be pulled open without a key card. The breakfast area quickly filled up with construction workers, since the furniture is still either plastic wrapped or stacked. When I went to check out, the two ladies at the desk were in a conversation with tech support about not being able to use the coder on the computer. I wanted to voice concerns in the morning, but was not given the opportunity. This hotel was booked through the Hilton app and was paid for in advance to guarantee the lowest rate. Had I not made that mistake, we would have gone elsewhere shortly...

Hampton Inns are usually pretty good in my experience and this was an old one that was refreshed into a Spark. This was the first AND last Spark I will stay in. I reserved a King room and the room was a bit underwhelming for refreshed room, for example there was only USB charging on one side of the bed with no outlet on the other side. For the side with two USB ports I tried plugging in two phones and it would not support even one, too low of power output so didn't charge. Ended up charging phone with my battery pack. For cleanliness, there was some pieces of hair on the bed sheets we had to remove, always makes you wonder if they really changed the linens. We checked in online and arrived super late and just wanted to sleep so we did not complain. HVAC controls were broke, display was blank, but fan was running and temp was okay so again did not complain as we were mainly there to sleep and leave. We were a bit mad there was only 1 washcloth provided, I hope this was an oversight by the staff and not intentional. It took about 5-6 minutes to get warm water to the showers, there must be something wrong because it never got hot after waiting ten minutes but was warm enough to stand in and the faucet had warm water after that no matter if you had hot or cold selected. I suspect a faulty mixing valve allowing it to cross over. Furniture was newer as part of the refresh but sparce as well, no drawers, just tables. No place for the Bible so was just sitting out, but cleanliness was not next to godliness as some trash was sitting on it. Breakfast was a bit sparce as well but bagels were good and coffee was above average. We were there a total of 9 hrs but had we had kids or stayed more than the night we probably would have checked out and went elsewhere. I feel like the refresh was lipstick on a pig and none of the infrastructure was improved to make for a great...